


Roses and Regrets

by foreverfangirlwrites



Series: Percabeth Oneshots [14]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Colors, Oneshot, Symbolism, and a hint of a taylor swift song, annabeth takes a sec to figure it out, but she does in the end, dont worry guys, feat roses, for a tumblr prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:02:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22565971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverfangirlwrites/pseuds/foreverfangirlwrites
Summary: Annabeth gets roses and they're pretty and pristine and perfect...and maybe she wishes they weren't...
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Series: Percabeth Oneshots [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1285145
Comments: 2
Kudos: 108





	Roses and Regrets

She hasn’t talked to Percy in two weeks.

She’s acutely aware of the fact too. You’d notice if one of your closest friends suddenly stopped talking to you. Well…not that suddenly. If she thinks back, the distance had been growing between them as unspoken tension lingered in the background and unsaid words grew heavier.

But even then, the off-kilter feelings and friction between them seemed to have come out of nowhere. It just doesn’t make sense to her.

But everything is like that with Percy. Nothing ever really makes sense. He is like a whirlwind of emotions and half-sentences and loose puzzle pieces.

A honk shakes her out of her thoughts, as she catches sight of Luke’s car outside. It’s a shiny silver, very clean, and he gets out of the car to open the door for her, offering a smile and a single white rose.

It’s very nice.

He tells her she looks beautiful; she blushes, and they talk over a quiet radio and arrive at a nice restaurant. And from there they follow the beats of a date: dinner, sweet smiles, dessert, a kiss good night.

She sighs when she shuts the door, a pleasant smile on her face. It’s been a nice day, no tensions, no fighting, no whirlwind. A good time with nice company and she feels calm for once.

Fishing out a vase, she puts her single white rose in water. Simple and perfect. She thinks maybe she’s finally got what she wants.

-.-

Luke makes sense, she realizes while walking in the park (she’s supposed to be jogging but has absolutely no motivation to do so). She can understand him, his actions, his goals, his personality.

As if on cue her phone rings. It’s him, of course, calling exactly when he said he would.

She picks up and he’s polite and charming, asks her how her jog is going, and chuckles when she tells him it isn’t and it’s nice to feel comfortable.

Her mind harkens back to Percy (without her permission, she might add) and how by now he would have made a teasing comment about her getting out of shape if she continued on like this (even though his homemade cookies that he _always_ brought over were the problem). But even though he’d obviously be teasing, it’d annoy her enough to make her jog twice the distance she would’ve just to prove a point.

Even just thinking about it has her a little worked up and she shakes him out of her mind. Luke is asking her about dinner and she readily agrees, finally admitting defeat on her jog in favor of going home and getting ready.

Dinner is nice, as is everything with Luke, and by the end of the night she gets another white rose and a sweet kiss to show for it.

When she gets home, she puts the white rose next to the other and they sit there next to each other, pristine and perfect.

She goes to sleep with a smile on her face.

-.-

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Luke says as they’re debating going barhopping over the weekend. A lot of her friends are going, and it’ll probably be fun but…

“It’s not that I don’t want to go, I just…I don’t know!” She’s frustrated—she hates being indecisive—but bars and parties aren’t that much her thing so she’s on the fence about it and…

Luke puts his arm around her and continues in his calm voice, “It’s alright, Annabeth. We’ll do whatever you want.”

It’s such a stark contrast to what Percy would do. By now, Percy would have declared his opinion and would probably be pushing her towards going to the event with that stupid wide grin on his face.

She huffs at the thought. She tells Luke she doesn’t want to go.

So, they don’t. She ends up with another white rose and goes to bed mostly content with her decision.

The next day all her friends have posted about how fun the event was. She stares at her white roses and thinks it’s probably alright.

-.-

A week later she’s hoisting up groceries to her apartment, huffing and puffing by the time she gets to her door. 

She makes a face as she sets the bags down and toes off her shoes. She hasn’t been out of breath like this in a long while, especially since she’d been building up a better tolerance for cardio through her daily jog—

Except…she hadn’t actually jogged in weeks.

Her frown deepens as she puts the food away. She needs to get back into the habit, but she doesn’t know why she stopped in the first place.

Her phone dings with a notification that Piper has posted something on Instagram. To fulfill her best friend duty, she immediately opens it up to like it.

The post is about the bar hop event that she missed and features a grinning Piper, Thalia and Jason all holding microphones, captioned with “never sang Eye of The Tiger better!!”

She likes the picture and comments a heart emoji, but her frown isn’t going away. She really should have gone…she just…

She’s frustrated again. It’s been like this for a while now, everything seems kind of off and she can’t put her finger on why. And she’s frustrated more often than she ever wants to be.

She sighs. She’s just had a bad run of it, it’ll be alright. She’ll get back into the swing of things.

Lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t realize her frown has settled on the white roses sitting prettily in the water.

-.-

Luke drops her off at the coffee shop she’s meeting Piper at. The smile she’s been faking slips away and the frown settles back on her face as she aimlessly fiddles with the with today’s— of course—white rose.

“Hey Beth!” Piper is one of two people in the entire world who can call her that. She tries not to think of the other person.

She gives her best friend a hug. “Hey Pipes.”

“What’s with the white rose?” she asks, dropping her bag to the floor as she sits down.

Annabeth shrugs. “Luke gives them to me.”

Piper raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

She shrugs again. “I don’t know, to be nice?”

“But you don’t even like white roses?”

It’s true that she had once declared she didn’t care for white roses and would carry red roses instead at her own wedding. Granted, that had been a few wineglasses and years ago, but she supposes it still rings true.

She shrugs for the third time, suddenly anxious to get away from the topic, and sets the flower down a little ways away. It’s bright against the dark wood of the table.

She turns towards Piper and asks her about Jason.

-.-

It’s two am and she cannot call asleep. Her mind is spinning with way too many thoughts and she can’t turn any of them off. One thing just leads to another and another and another until sea green eyes fill her mind and she’s thinking about Percy.

It’s been a month and now in the darkness of night she can admit that she misses him. She doesn’t even know why. Everything was a mess with him, nothing made sense, it was all complex and chaotic emotions. He pushed her buttons, pulled her away from comfortability, and it was a constant whirlwind.

With Percy it was all breaking down and coming undone and an almost roller coaster kind of rush. She swears he’s insane but—

But she still misses him, despite all that.

She curses his name, turns over, and tries to block out the memories of hearts beating fast and the strange freedom that came with screaming in the rain.

-.-

She’s ready early, because Luke always shows up on time, looking aimlessly out the window for signs of the shiny silver car.

Her gaze naturally lands on the vase of white roses, still looking pretty and pristine, and suddenly they’re making her frown instead of smile. They’re suddenly too elegant, too perfect, and it makes her stomach churn.

It’s such an intense emotion and it comes out of nowhere and—

It doesn’t make sense.

Strangely enough, the thought makes her smile. Things not making sense? She’s used to that, used to figuring that out, used to it because Percy—

Percy motivates her to jog when she doesn’t want to (because he knows how she hates herself for it afterwards if she skips out). Percy pushes her towards new experiences that might be a little out of her comfort zone (and it’s those experiences she remembers the most vividly). Percy is a mess, he’s rain and screaming, puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit and a rollercoaster she didn’t know she missed.

Percy doesn’t make sense.

And Percy is everything she nee—

A honk breaks her out of her thoughts.

Percy is late.

The beat up, messy, blue Prius is a sigh for sore eyes. He doesn’t get out of the car to let her in but invites her in by turning up the volume and belting out Rick Astley’s Never Going To Give You Up.

He offers a wide grin, telling her she looks absolutely stunning, and a few seconds later she’s screaming along to the lyrics with him.

She’s jogged everyday for the past week, they’re on their way to some event downtown that she’s not sure of, but Percy’s look of excitement is everything.

As quickly as he had turned it up, he lowers the volume suddenly, and when she turns to look at him questioningly, he’s just staring at her.

It’s a little uncomfortable and completely out of left field and of course it doesn’t make sense.

But she’s used to it, used to figuring it out.

So, it doesn't take her long to figure out the look of love in his eyes.

-.-

She sighs when she shuts the door behind her. It’s been a great day, she has tingling lips and a smirking Percy in front of her to show for it.

His next kiss causes her to lose all brain functions and she wonders if maybe she’s the insane one. Her hands let go of her stuff and it falls to the floor as she tangles her fingers in his hair.

It’s messy and wild and she feels the whirlwind inside of her. She never knew she could feel this much.

They stumble further into the apartment, giggling and happy. It’s been a long time coming.

And on the floor by the door lay shoes, a purse, and a single red rose.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to yourtrashyfangurl on tumblr for choosing the prompt Roses! If you want to send me a prompt, feel free to leave an ask on my tumblr: forevfangirlwrites 
> 
> Hope you guys liked this little fic (with a mixture of The Way I Loved You by Taylor Swift)!
> 
> Please comment!  
> And as always, thanks for reading!  
> See ya! :)


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